Once you have created and promoted your website, you may find that you wish to keep track of how many visitors are accessing your page. While Web Manager does not include any visitor tracking statistics, it is possible to incorporate a free visitor tracking system on your pages through a service called Google Analytics.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an application that records the number of visitors to your website pages automatically. This run-through will direct you in setting up an account and copying and pasting the HTML code into your Website Settings manager. Once it is copied, the following statistics are available:

Number of unique visitors

Geographic location of unique visitors

Amount of time spent at your site - per page, and on average

Which pages on your site received the most traffic

Which pages caused the visitor to leave your site

Which websites are currently linked and sending visitors to your site

And more!

Setting up your Google Analytics Account

In order to sign up for tracking statistics on your website, you will need to create or use an existing Google account. This is free to set up, and can be set up with your Lotus Notes e-mail address as your username (your_name@usc.salvationarmy.org). This process does not require that you create a new e-mail account, or sign up for any type of e-mail solicitation or spam. By visiting http://www.google.com/analytics and clicking on "Sign Up Now," Google will guide you through the steps to create this account. You will need a valid e-mail address to sign up for the service, as they will send a confirmation e-mail to a pre-existing e-mail account.

Once you have created the account and are logged in, click on the "Add Website Profile" link to begin adding your site to the manager.

The option that you will want to focus on is the portion that asks you to create a new URL for tracking. Because Google Analytics likes to have a specific type of URL (and is not fond of site files with .nsf extensions), it is best to use the following URL for your site - the root server URL for the Central Territory webpages: http://www.usc.salvationarmy.org

Your tracking will not actually record visitors to the Central Territory website, as it will only look for your corresponding JavaScript code on pages that are hosted on that root server. Your site pages will be located at http://www.usc.salvationarmy.org/usc/www_usc_yourpage.nsf. However, Google Analytics needs a different type of URL, so it is good practice to use the root server mentioned above.

Once you have typed in the URL and clicked on Continue, you will be brought to a screen with a series of HTML tags, referred to as the "Tracking Code."

Simply select all of the tracking code in the box, and select Edit --> Copy in your browser or right-click and select Copy on the highlighted text.

Open the Web Manager for your website. In the "Website Settings" page of Web Manager, place your cursor in the "Custom Javascript" box and select Edit --> Paste or right click on the blank space and select Paste. This will automatically place the tracking code on each page of your website, saving you the time and effort of having to do this manually. When pages are opened in your website, this code invisibly records how many visitors you receive.

After these steps are completed, it will usually take about 24 hours for visitor tracking results to show up in Google Analytics. To access these statistics at any time, login to your account with your chosen username and password at http://www.google.com/analytics.